Collaborating Authors

TwitchCon 2018 is fast approaching, and the annual celebration of the streamer community will again hold a hackathon for developers to create fun and/or useful Twitch extensions using the platform's API tools. They'll have 24 hours to build their projects. After partnered streamers suggest ideas for features, staff will examine the submissions, and then developers will try to create extensions in teams of up to four by the deadline. The teams can choose which project they'd like to tackle, and a day later, they'll present their creations to the judges. The extensions will be assessed on creativity, practicality, presentation and how well they fit with Twitch's culture.

Twitch released a desktop app earlier this month offering more functionality than its browser version, but they saved even bigger news for PAX West. Savvy followers might have seen their favorite content creators demo the new tools in the last few months (like Hearthstone streamer Trump in the pic at the top of this post). Other extensions benefit creators directly: 'Gear on Amazon,' for example, earns Twitch Partners and Affiliates (aka streamers) commission through Amazon's Associates program when fans buy stuff promoted by their favorite content creator (see example below). This one is the first, but not last, extension to use monetizations: In a press release, Twitch noted that they will share more ways developers can make money through extensions at TwitchCon's Developer Day on October 19th.

It's Aug. 22 and Middle-earth: Shadow of War has just launched. Joe Streamer on Twitch got the game a few days ago from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and he's finally able to start sharing it with his 10,000 followers. Joe Streamer also sells Shadow of War through his Twitch page, compliments of a new feature the streaming service is set to offer. For every copy he sells via Twitch, he'll pocket 5 percent of that money himself. SEE ALSO: Blizzard and Twitch just had the most amazing'Overwatch' GIF exchange How enthusiastic do you think Joe Streamer will be when he talks about Middle-earth: Shadow of War? Whether or not Joe Streamer is an honest dude, it's the potential for dishonesty that counts here.

Twitch is finally ready to take the wraps off its effort to sell games to the stream-watching masses. The Amazon-owned company now has 51 games for sale, 39 of which require the Twitch desktop app to launch. The others require different software or an account for that specific game. The five games from Ubisoft, for example, require Uplay, while Trion Reactor games use Glyph. You can find a complete list of Twitch-sold games on the site's blog.

When two people were killed and 11 injured at a Madden football video game tournament at a bar in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sunday, the incident joined the list of hundreds of tragic shootings that have already taken place in the US this year. But it was the first to occur during a video game tournament, and the first to have been unintentionally broadcast live online. Viewers were watching the tournament online via Twitch, a video-streaming platform. Some of the millions of people who tune in daily had suddenly found themselves witnesses to a violent crime. In the disturbing footage, which has since been taken down by Twitch, a laser sight could be seen on the chest of one of the competitors before the first shots were fired.